Innocence and Experience, Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets a review by Mike Hertenstein

In my reading of spiritual masters, I have noticed that persons we now view as saintly have a finely calibrated sense of sin. Aware of God's ideal, aspiring to holiness, free of the vanity and defensiveness that blind most people, they live in full awareness of falling short. Thomas Merton makes this point in an odd comparison between Adolf Hitler and Theresa of Avila:

Saint Theresa thinks everybody is the same as she is because we are all sinners. Hitler thinks everybody is different from him, because they are, some of them less pure, some of them less noble, some of them less intelligent, some of them less beautiful, all of them less godlike, all of them less perfect. It is the Hitlers who think they are perfect—because nobody else thinks so. It is the saints who know they are not perfect, although sometimes other people say of them that they are saints: the saints themselves know themselves only as sinners, liable to lose their love and the sight of Christ through a movement of impatience or selfishness or pride.

True saints do not get discouraged over their faults, for they recognize that a person who feels no guilt can never find healing. Paradoxically, neither can a person who wallows in guilt. The sense of guilt only serves its designed purpose if it presses us toward the God who promises forgiveness and restoration.

Philip Yancey, Guilt Good and Bad, The early warning signs.

Been having fun with The Advertising Slogan Generator. Modified a couple to make them fit the blog culture.

• With A Name Like IdeaJoy, It Has To Be Good.
  
• The Best Part of Waking Up is IdeaJoy on your blog roll.
  
• IdeaJoy-Fiskin' Good.
  
• Come See the Blogger Side of Ideajoy.
  
• Doing It Right Before Your IdeaJoy.
  
• Any Time, Any Place, IdeaJoy.
  
• IdeaJoy Saves Your Soul - um no, but we know someone who can.
  
• The Curiously Strong IdeaJoy.
  
• Built IdeaJoy Tough.
  

Behold the Power of Mr. Wright!

-Peace

because you can program well or poorly, and because most of it is creative (in that we don't really know what we're doing when we start out), my view is that we should train developers the way we train creative people like poets and artists

- The Poetry of Programming an interview with Richard Gabriel, Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems

For those of you on the blogs4God list who use frames in your blogs, you'll be glad to know your links are now being counted in Who Links Who. I added the upgrade when Rudy's links to IdeaJoy from UrbanOnRamps.com didn't show up in IdeaJoy's WLW entry. So now I check for frames and parse them as well. There's still some issues to work out, but it's an improvement.

-Peace

Life of St. Francis by Giotto di Bondone is a collection of twenty eight paintings of the good monk's life. Five paintings with selected text about St. Francis are online. The art work is wonderful, and the selections thoughtful. This on a page about: St. Francis, Burning Bright, a program on the life of St. Francis that was broadcast by Ideas.

-Peace

Stroke the ego

This morning, on the c-train a woman commented that I read good books. I’m reading Surprised by Joy, she mentioned that last time she saw me I was reading the Hobbit, that would have been last year, good memory. On top of that, Rudy Carrasco thinks I’m super cool. Not bad for Tuesday.

-Peace

Saw Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on Saturday. Reviews abound, so I don't feel a burning need for another one. One thing I do want to share, HP & tCoS gave me a new appreciation of Fellowship of the Rings. Both are adaptations of books too large for one movie. In FotR they dealt with this challenge by chopping out large sections of the book, combining characters and focusing on one or two aspects of the story. By chopping out whole sections what was left was given a great treatment, sometimes even expanding on the book.

In tCos they reduce all of the secondary elements but don't chop much out. We get little glimses of things that didn't add much to the story. Near the beginning Harry takes a wrong turn and ends up in the shady part of Diagon Ally. In the book this moves the story ahead as Harry overhears Draco Malfoy and his father talking. However in the movie, we just get a glimpse of some unsavory Wizzards and Witches, not much of point to the wrong turn. It does show us that Harry still isn't at home in the magical world, but when dealing with so much material you've got to double up, move the story and develop character all at the same time.

The challenge of having too much material won't get easier, the third book is longer than the first two and the goblet of fire is almost twice as long as the third.

-Peace

Santa Lives Here

or at least his email server does. According to Wired News in Dear Santa: You've Got E-Mail, the best web site for getting email to Santa is EmailSanta.com, based right here in Calgary.

-Peace
Dave

PS in case you're wondering we've told our daughter Santa is a game since she was two.